10.17.2010

Baptisms

This past Sabbath was a special Sabbath at Mundri; we had 8 baptisms!Now I didn't understand exactly what this was going to entail, but Idefinitely gained an education in the proper way to do a baptism inSouth Sudan. After church, Pastor Nelson announced that we would begoing to the river for the baptisms. This made sense, as the churchhas no baptistry. But as the congregation started to march throughtown singing, I began to realize that this would be more than just asimple trip to the river. We proceeded to parade through the entiretown, right up main street; the youth choir in front, then thebaptismal candidates in white robes, and then the rest of thecongregation following behind. We walked past the shops, past therestaurants, past the traffic police, past a political rally, all theway across the Mundri bridge, about two miles from the church.

By the time we arrived at the riverbank, we had gathered quite a lotof spectators, and, not one to miss an opportunity to reach a crowd,our friend Charles, a former Global Mission pioneer preached a rousingsermon about Jesus' example of baptism by immersion. It was quite awarm day, and by the time he was finished, I bet he could havecollected several more willing volunteers for an immersion!

Finally Pastor Nelson called each candidate out into the water andbaptized them, alternating between speaking in Arabic and English.Everybody cheered and we all sang a few more songs. While all thiswas going on, several Indonesians from the local UN camp drove acrossthe bridge to the other side of the river and commenced with theirweekly bath. I wonder what they thought of all the commotion acrossthe river :) Anyway, it was quite an experience; baptism is supposedto be a public demonstration of a life-changing decision, and this wasdefinitely public!